This one is from 2018 after publication of The Soldier.
What do
you read for pleasure and what are you currently reading?
My
preference is for science fiction and fantasy books, but I do read other stuff.
Having gone through a bit of a hiatus in my reading I’m easing myself back in
with some Terry Pratchett books. I’ve just finished The Hogfather and have
Sourcery lined up next.
Where is
your favourite place to read?
Sprawled
on my sofa with my feet up on my table. Location is irrelevant, beyond it being
comfortable, since I am in the book.
When and
where do you do your best writing?
I have a
small bedroom converted into an office where I work on a pc, in England, while
in Crete I use a laptop – in both places at a desk. However, just like with
reading, location is unimportant beyond it being comfortable and without
distraction. That being said, I do work better in the latter location when it
is without an internet connection.
This is
the start of a new trilogy but not a new universe for you, what inspired these
new novels?
With book
upon book I’ve steadily been filling in the detail of my Polity universe. One
item in this universe I wanted to expand on is something called Jain
technology. In this future a hostile civilization-destroying alien technology
has wiped out other alien races and threatens the Polity. I wanted to say
something about this and the Jain themselves. To this end I picked up a loose
thread at the end of my Cormac series concerning two characters – an enhanced
human called Orlandine and an alien entity (like a small organic moon) called
Dragon – and ran with it. But inspiration? There is a quote by Peter De Vries
that covers this: ‘I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired
at nine o’clock every morning.’
Can you
tell us a bit more about the Polity universe for anyone not familiar with it?
Humanity
expanded out into the Solar System, and began expanding out into the galaxy
using generation ships, when the Artificial Intelligences took power in an all
but bloodless conflict called the Quiet War. Under their benevolent
dictatorship, and with the development of a U-space drive for ships
(faster-than-light travel) and runcible gates (instantaneous matter
transmission between worlds), humanity has expanded massively into the galaxy.
The Polity is a nominally utopian society in which all ills have been cured and
all citizens can potentially live forever. It is packed with glittering
futuristic technology that should pave the way to technological singularity,
but does not. Giant ships roam between worlds and there are even those who have
embarked on a million-year project to build a Dyson sphere. But the universe is
a dangerous place. The Polity has survived a massive interstellar war against
hostile crablike aliens called prador and is now in uneasy truce with them. AIs
go rogue and can be incredibly dangerous. Separatist terrorists work against AI
rule. And of course there is that Jain technology too . . .
How far
are you into writing the next two novels? Can you give us any hints as what we
can look forward to?
I have the
next book in the trilogy, called The Warship, and am now finishing off with the
edited typescript. I have also written to first draft the final book,
tentatively called The Human, and am leaving that alone for a while so I can
cast a new eye over it later.
How would
you describe your writing process?
Ideally,
when I start out on a new book, I sit down at my desk at about 8AM, read
through and edit what I wrote the day before, then write 2,000 words – I do
this five days a week. In reality it is not as neat as that. I sit and read
science articles, I get distracted by the social media, I procrastinate,
sometimes I’m too tired to work, sometimes I get bored with what I’m doing etc.
Still, I do manage to stay one or two books ahead of the publisher.
How would
you describe The Soldier in only 3 words?
Sensawunda
and action.
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